Aug 25, 2011 10:11 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is gearing up to push System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 to the next stage of the development process.

The Redmond company launched the Beta testing program for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 in March 2011, and early adopters have had plenty of time to take the release out for a spin.

Customers that haven’t tested System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta so far will still get the chance to run a pre-release version of the solution.

This because the Redmond company is preparing to provide the Release Candidate (RC) development milestone of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, at least according to an update provided by the software giant.

A new “System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta – Evaluation (VHD)” page went live on the Microsoft Download Center earlier this week, providing customers with the following notification:

“The evaluation period for the VMM 2012 Beta VHD has ended. We will be releasing VMM 2012 Release Candidate and an updated evaluation VHD soon. We will update our web site when it is available for download.”

Microsoft has not specified the exact release deadline of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC, but the promise that the Build will be launched soon sounds promising, if nothing else.

For the time being, the Beta Build of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 continues to be offered to early adopters. Testers can still download the Beta and get a taste of what’s coming in VMM 2012, even though the software giant has closed the testing program associated with the release.

“System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 delivers industry leading fabric management, virtual machine management and services deployment in private cloud environments,” Microsoft said.

“Virtual Machine Manager 2012 offers key new features that include hypervisor creation and management, network management, storage management, private cloud creation, self-service usage and service creation. It features deep investments in server application virtualization, service design and service modeling all of which can be used to efficiently offer an on-premises private cloud.”

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 Beta is available for download here.